The present invention is a computerized system and method for searching through and retrieving information from an informational resource; and more particularly, the present invention is an information management, retrieval and display system for searching through an informational resource and for displaying the results of the search in an collapsible/expandable format based upon a user-selected display criteria or hierarchy.
An inherent drawback in many conventional search engines or search tools, such as Infoseek.TM., AltaVista.TM., Hotbot.TM., is that the results of the search are typically organized according to the number of hits that the search word or phrase made in each document (Web page) being searched. This type of search result display requires the end user to go through the hits one by one in order to finally access the document he/she was looking for. Another drawback with such conventional search engines is that the results of the search do not take into account that a word may have several different meanings, and may be used in many different contexts. For example, if an end user were looking for information on a cartoon mouse, because the search query would contain the word "mouse," the list of hits will include documents for the electronic cursor-control devices, documents providing biological information on mice, documents providing pet information on mice, etc. Therefore, the end user may have to go through an enormous number of these hits before finally (if ever) reaching a hit related to the cartoon mouse.
Thus, there is a need for a search engine or search tool that allows the end user to that arranges the search results in a manner that allows the end user to effectively and quickly obtain items of interest.